The story I had to finally face | Becoming a bestselling author Pt. 1

This episode is layered.

In part one of this two-part series, Ebony takes listeners behind the scenes of her journey to becoming a bestselling author — a process that began long before writing the chapter itself.

Before Sedona.

Before the manuscript.

Before the words hit the page.

There was story mining.

In this deeply personal conversation, Ebony shares what it looked like to revisit painful memories, face the abuse she had only spoken about out loud before, and uncover the thread connecting her survival, healing, motherhood, and purpose.

This episode explores:

• What “story mining” actually is
• Why writing trauma feels different than speaking it
• The connection between self-trust and healing
• How surviving shaped the woman, coach, and mother she is today
• Why thriving begins when we stop abandoning ourselves in the middle of our story

If you’ve ever wondered how your pain connects to your purpose… this episode will meet you there.

Follow and chat with me on Instagram:

Podcast account - @thrivelikeamother.podcast

Personal account - @thrive.empowered

Sending you light and love always!

Transcript

When Saying It Isn’t Facing It

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I had spoken the words out loud before I had acknowledged that it happened, that it is a part of my life. But there's something different about like writing it down on paper, putting it ink, and knowing that the moment with my mom of revealing to her everything that I that I had gone through, that it would just live on a page forever. Hey love, I'm Ebony and welcome to Thrive Like a Mother, a podcast for women who are ready to slow down, nourish themselves, and build lives that feel anchored and intentional instead of rushed. If you're tired of surviving and ready to thrive physically, mentally, and spiritually, you're in the right place. Each week, I share grounded conversations and practical rhythms to help you regulate your nervous system, strengthen your relationship with food and rest, and return to yourself. So love, take a breath. Let's thrive together. This episode is layered, which means it had to be two parts because I am finally taking you on a journey behind the scenes of me becoming a best-selling author. Whew. I don't think I've said that out loud before. And y'all, if I'm being quite honest, this whole journey in itself didn't even start with me writing. You know those times where, like, you might be watching a movie or a show and you see the author or somebody, even someone like working on like a paper for school or something. They're sitting there at the document and they're about to start just typing, right? There they start typing one word and then they're like, oh my gosh, I'm stuck. I have all the things. My journey did not start there. It did not start with just writing the chapter that is going to be coming out in this book in September. September 1st is when it drops. And so I wanna, I wanna jump literally straight in and start talking about what my journey looked like, what the process looked like. This part one of this episode, we're gonna be diving into that. We're gonna be diving into some revelations that I had as a writer, as an author, as someone who has lived my story and now needed to put literal pen to paper. So let's just let's dive in. Y'all, before I even started writing the chapter, each of us, which it's me and five other phenomenal, powerful women that are going to be in this book. Y'all, before I even started writing, we went through a process called story mining, which was not something that I've done before, not in this capacity. So I was literally going like decade by decade with these questions, like deep, deep questions asking yourself about what were your what you were feeling about particular times in your life. Uh you know, what what particular memories do you have that are still very prominent for you? It's literally just a full, it is what it sounds like. You're mining your own stories of your life. And so I'm gonna ask you something. And this is just something that came up for me as I was doing this process is like, what part of your story have you learned to say out loud, but not fully face? Because for me, a big part of my story was naming the abuse that I endured. And I had spoken the words out loud before I had acknowledged that it happened, that it is a part of my life. But there's something different about like writing it down on paper, putting it ink, and knowing that the moment with my mom of revealing to her everything that I that I had gone through, that it would just live on a page forever. It made it made everything different. It was it's because like it felt so much more permanent as in people would be able to read that particular part of my life like forever. It's it's in this book, right? It's in my chapter. And it was something that, or it is something that honestly it couldn't be softened by time, as in like, yes, I said the words out loud, but as time moved on, that story in itself can never be softened, right? That such a traumatic time in my life, it wasn't something that I knew deserved to be buried under other posts either, because that post that I did just on my social media a long time ago sharing what I had gone through that is now buried under so many other, so many other memories. And it absolutely, I felt it in my soul that it was not something that could be hidden in who I am today, because it is a piece of me. When you read my chapter, you will 100% understand this uh and where I come from and why I teach, what I teach, why I am the way that I am. It starts to make sense. And so just answer that question for yourself. What are some parts of your life, or what one particular part have you been able to say out loud? Have you fully, fully faced it? Have you owned that part of your story? So I'm gonna talk about the shift that happened for me because there was this time period where I did the story mining, and then we as a group went to write our chapters in Sedona, Arizona. Let me just say, Sedona now has Arizona in itself already had a very special place in my heart. It is where it is Thrive Like a Mother was actually born. The inkling, the thought, but Sedona, because there's this one thing of story mining, right? Now you have your stories, you have your pieces, and not every part of it made it even into the chapter, but you have these things, and then we get to Sedona, and it's like, oh shit, we've got to write this chapter. We're writing it right now. The first draft, we started in Sedona. And before Sedona, obviously, now that I've brought up all of these memories, I've written them down, they're in my journal, which I actually have it right here that I share with you.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Gosh. My stories.

Finding The Real Thread: Self-Trust

Go Slow, Get Support, Breathe

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Before I got to Sedona, I knew my stories, but I didn't understand them. I didn't understand how they made me who I was. So I was like, okay, these are my experiences, but why are these particular memories important? And when we got to Sedona, I still had not faced it. I still had not faced it until that moment, not fully. I didn't fully understand like how what I went through connected to the women that I am today today, the coach that I am today, the chef that I am today. And I still, at that point in time, was still struggling with why God allowed what happened to me to happen, why God allows any child to go through what I went through. The Sedona broke me right open, y'all. Like when I tell you, finally seeing all of the pieces and being able to sit with my story, there was no escape. There was no escape. We were sent off to our own parts of the house where we were we were sitting with our stories that we had in mind, and our task was to start this chapter. And so at that point, then I was sitting in front of the laptop, like, okay, what word do what words do I want to put in this chapter? And it went really from what words I needed to put in there and it changed to what are my threads of my journey? What are those things that pull all of these stories together? What is the common like thread throughout my life that because of these things happened? They like they made me who I am today. And in Sedona, I started to see the thread. One of our facilitators of this mastermind cat, she was a major part in helping me figure out what that thread was. She, so I started, I started doing my I started doing my chapter, right? I'm typing, I'm typing, typing, and I'm thinking, like, yeah, I've got it, I've got it. Kat comes in, and you know how sometimes you can take parts of your story and you start to make things pretty, right? It was just like, yeah, this is this is it, right? I started talking to her and I started to realize that the thread that I wanted to be the thread was not actually the thread. And she helped me reveal, like, okay, no, this, this is the thread. And that for me was self-trust and literally having to build that up in myself, literally brick by brick, having them knock down a few times because motherhood will do that to you, but having to build up my trust in myself brick by brick. It wasn't something that I got to gain as a child. Uh, and when you read the chapter, you will understand why it wasn't something that was modeled for me. I didn't have an example, and so I had to literally build it. And I will say, still a work in progress, right? I'm not a perfect human, none of us are. But I now have the tools in place, which I often share with you guys of how to build those bricks up, how to trust in yourself, trust in the one who made you. Goodness. That's what Sedona was for me was revealing that thread and understanding then how to pull that through all of my stories that I decided to include in this chapter. I will say it didn't end after Sedona, right? It wasn't like we wrote our chapter and that was it. No, y'all, goodness, goodness, goodness. That was not the end. But it really starts, like I said, fully facing, you know, the pieces of your story, fully owning the parts of yourself that you've been able to maybe say out loud, but they've gotten hidden somewhere along the way. Right. And it's sometimes it's not the thing that has happened to you, but it is what that has created in you, what you have had to build as a result of that thing that happened to you. Goodness. And so as we close this part one and me sharing this journey, I want you to, first of all, not walk away. Like you need to go do that process that I talked about of story mining, and you have to go like dig everything up at once. That is the first thing. That is not something that I did. This was something that happened in pieces. And if you are someone like me who has gone through something traumatic, you absolutely want to be careful about that because it is going to bring up things for you. It is going to trigger memories for you. And I just want you to, if this is a path that you want to start taking about, you know, writing your own book or writing your own chapter, make sure you are supported. Make sure you are kind with yourself and make sure you take your time. This is not a rushed process at all, at all. It's about truly honoring what has already happened in your life. And so maybe today your only practice is us taking a deep breath, first of all.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

This is our moment to land.

Thriving Starts With Not Abandoning You

Share With A Friend And Tag Me

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Take a deep breath and go back to that question that I asked you in the beginning and really just like sit with it for a second. And so it's really just like, what part of your story are you ready to acknowledge? What part of your story have you maybe said out loud and you haven't fully faced it, but you want to acknowledge it without going to like try to fix it? And like for sure, y'all, that part of my story is not one that can be fixed. It is an event that I endured and that I survived and I'm here, but it is a piece of my story. And it did, it was a catalyst for who I am today and what I had to do as an as a result of that happening to me. And so, no solving, no trying to explain, just allow yourself to be seen by yourself first, like fully see you. Y'all, thriving does not start. It does not start when everything starts to make sense. It starts when you stop abandoning yourself in the middle of your story. So I don't just want to challenge you today to see yourself. I urge you to see yourself, to hold space for yourself and your story, every single part of it. So, to recap, today, we talked in this episode about what it actually looks like to face your story and not just say it out loud. And for me, that has been that process of no longer am I just saying it out loud on a podcast, saying it out loud on stage, saying it out loud in a post, writing it down and fully allowing myself to face that story, that part of my life and truly understanding how it impacted me. We also talked about the hardest parts of your journey, how those can become the foundation of who you are today, no matter how traumatic what you have gone through, right? Because I know there are maybe a lot of survivors that listen in to Thrive Like a Mother, no matter how traumatic of a thing you have gone through, it has become a part, or it is not has, it is a part of your story, but it doesn't have to end with that. That thing that you went through created something within you that laid the foundation for something else powerful, right? And for me, that was literally having to build up self-trust and without an example, without a model, having to do that to a point where I can now teach other women and other mothers how to do that when they feel like they absolutely cannot, because I've been there. And so we also talked about why self-trust is something, first of all, that we build and sometimes, like I said, get knocks down, gets knocked down from time to time, and how you can continue to build up those bricks of self-trust, one brick at a time. Yeah, so if this this episode, this part one, if it's stirring something up in you, I'd love for you to share it with someone that you trust, maybe start the conversation about how you are going to honor the parts of your story or acknowledge the parts of your story that have had an impact on your life, that have created a thread in who you are today, and not have to have it all figured out, right? Not to go in into it with trying to figure out a solution. But honestly, because you're learning now, I pray that me sharing my journey is going to help you learn how to hold on to your stories and what has made you who you are a lot differently. Goodness. So you don't have to rush your healing, never ever, and you don't have to leave yourself stuck in the survival wheel, in the healing wheel. Just take a deep breath after this one, and I will meet you in part two of this series. Thank you so much for listening, love. If anything in today's episode resonated with you, share it with your bestie or share it on social media and tag me so we can chat about it. As always, sending you light and love. And remember, you are worthy, you are enough, and you deserve to thrive.